Tuesday, December 30, 2014

If you love delving into mystery, murder and the occult,
Frank Say’s The Serpent Bearer is
well worth while. Using New Orleans to full and realistic advantage, Say
introduces Sydney Monroe, her grandmother, her sister, and the Saintclair
family as fully developed and relatable characters. The young and gifted Sydney tells the story;
the uptight grandmother (whom we somehow instinctively love) is the one who
volunteers Sydney’s psychic services to the mysteriously troubled Saintclairs.

Say is a wonderfully descriptive and atmospheric writer, and his
dialog flows with natural ease. In The Serpent
Bearer, he deals
with the occult as a natural phenomenon – nothing particularly spooky about it.
Say, in fact, goes into some well-researched detail on shamanism and psychic
dreams.

This second title in the Lake
Pontchartrain Mysteries is certainly as
involving and suspenseful as his first. Where The Serpent Bearer differs from the dark and other-worldly Nine Lives is that it’s more sympathetic
(a la Ray Bradbury) and less horrifying (a la Stephen King). But it still gets
you. I must mention here that the cover, featuring original art by Laura
Sprunk, is quite striking.

There
is a caveat, a big one, which has nothing to do with Say’s masterful story
telling. I was wary at the outset when I had to order the book through Lulu, a
vanity press. Sure enough, trouble started on the front flap of the dust
jacket: a paragraph cut off mid-sentence. The entire narrative was fraught with
misused words, misspellings, and punctuation errors. One chapter abruptly ends in mid-sentence just as the sisters are about to try giving a pitifully
frightened little dog his meds. If I hadn't been reading it so late at night I would've called Frank to find out what happened! An editor is credited on the opening
pages. Where was she? Didn’t Frank get a chance to look over a galley proof
before the book went to press? There’s no way his master’s thesis was presented
in such a state!

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Yes, Husband did a super job keeping it all together while I
recovered from my facelift. He cooked, he shopped, he washed dishes, did
laundry, and vacuumed. And he was very good-natured about it – especially considering
this incapacity was all my idea.

So it should be no surprise that, in the process, he learned
what it takes to keep a household running. And he was not only appreciative, he
was a bit appalled. So he decided that henceforward he would help out by doing
the Wednesday laundry.

But I didn’t want the help.

From Day One I was trained for housekeeping. That’s the
story of women of my generation. Whatever else we became in life, we must also –
and without fail – be consummate housekeepers. Yes, my mother held advanced
degrees, as did her mother before her. But that was no excuse NOT to have a
pristine house.

And I’m good at it. I’m fast, efficient, thorough, and I
know stuff: fabrics, products, techniques. I have a schedule; a system. Giving
up the Wednesday laundry destroyed my rhythm. What would a man know about
sorting clothes? His mother wouldn’t have taught him. It wasn’t man’s work.
Besides, she had a daughter. Husband can’t even wring out a wash cloth and hang
it up straight!

So I protested. I whined. I vociferously pointed out that I
was best at this, I enjoyed it, and he’d done more than enough already by
providing a house in the first place. All those long hours of stressful work
and miles upon miles of commuting. Let me do my thing! Good grief, what else am
I good for? My Social Security barely pays my share of the groceries!

But no, he wanted to do this. He wants to help. Sigh.

So I let it go. I didn’t even watch him sort or peer over
his shoulder at the washer settings. I went to Walmart. I came home with
ingredients for several baking projects and had the time to use them. I even
picked up his favorite mixed nuts for being such a good and considerate
husband. All in all, it was a really satisfying day.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Just read a touching story that made me wonder what I would
do in such a situation. It was a letter written by the mother of a 3-year-old
autistic girl to the stranger who sat next to them on a plane. It was a blog by Shanell Mouland in the
Parent section of Huff Post.

“I sat Kate in the middle
knowing full well there would be a stranger sitting next to her for the
duration of this flight. I had to make a quick decision, and based on her
obsession with opening and closing the window shade, I figured she might be less
of a distraction if she sat in the middle.”

She recalls holding her breath while the entire Temple
basketball team streamed past. She watched hopefully as several grandmotherly
types came on, but all moved passed. At length a man with a briefcase and all the
accouterments of corporate power took the empty seat – just the opposite of anything
she’d hoped for.

“The moment you sat
down, Kate started to rub your arm. Your jacket was soft and she liked the feel
of it. You could have shifted uncomfortably in your seat. You could have ignored
her. You could have given me that look. You did none of that. You engaged Kate
in conversation. The interaction went on and on and you never once seemed
annoyed.”

She recorded bits of the conversation. I could only shake my
head and marvel. Yes, I’ve had some encounters. I babysat an autistic
4-year-old boy once when I was in college. Total nightmare. My mother fostered
a mid-aged autistic girl for several years and they remained in touch. I was
obliged to contact her decades later in keeping with my mom’s will. She
definitely hadn’t improved.

Let’s face it: I even have problems with normal kids. Of
course I love my children and grandchildren, but I’m simply not a person who
relates well with the young. Fortunately my wonderful daughter (the oldest)
revealed her superior mothering instincts and administrative skills as a
toddler. She took it from there.

So I don’t know what I would’ve done in that kind man’s
place. I hope I would at least be civil. I would understand and sympathize –
even admire the poor mother. After all, I do come from a long line of
ministers, social workers and educators. But I could never have talked and played with
that child the way that man did.

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

When all is healed I may even look better than my profile
pic, which was taken five or six years ago.
Wattles are gone, my chin singled, heavily hooded eyelids now as taut as
a teen’s. In short, everything was done as promised by Lifestyle Lift.

Yet even now, nearly a month after the procedure, the skin
of my face, neck and scalp can barely tolerate touch. Yes, the bruising has all
but vanished and the swelling recurs rarely and only momentarily, but the
incisions still burn and itch. This is a much
more serious undertaking than I’d figured.

And despite rather promising results, I have to ask myself: why would such a strong, healthy person voluntarily
go under the knife? Routine household
tasks exhaust me. I take several naps a day. I look like a character in a Tim Burton
cartoon. I probably won’t leave the house until Superbowl.

There may be another reason healing is so slow. Very much on
my mind is where I was last year at this time: a shabby Motel 6 in Santa Rosa,
CA, spending as much time as possible at a hospice where my sister was
succumbing to cancer.

I arrived New Year’s Eve after a frantic 3-day drive from
Houston. I was with her through her birthday on January 3rd, but didn’t make it
before her death on the morning of the 4th.

There followed a couple of weeks in a daze of arrangements
and sorting through the few worldly possessions in her tiny mountain cabin. My
sister’s friends and neighbors were very kind and helpful, but my own kith and
kin were thousands of miles away. Phone calls and emails were very limited in
the remote and rugged altitudes. While I have many grateful memories of the place,
it’s the weight of grief and loneliness that haunts me now. It will pass, as it
always does. And so will the pain from this surgery.

Sunday, December 15, 2013

I feel you should know our mail carrier has always been extremely conscientious, but now
her caring and pride in her job has actually made her the instrument of an
out-and-out Christmas Miracle.

It’s the time of year when your staff is busiest, but not
wanting to leave a package needing refrigeration in the pick-up box, she came
to my door hoping to deliver it personally.
That decision marked her as my personal angel.

I’ll explain.

Knowing I’d be having surgery last week, I’d made every
attempt to gather gifts for my grandchildren well in advance. Alas, 3 items
didn’t make it in time, probably because that vendor used UPS! Furthermore, the surgery (actually, let’s face it, an unconscionable
Lifestyle Lift) proved way worse than expected. I’m not permitted to heft
anything heavier than a remote. Let alone wrap presents. The whole mess was on an upstairs table and I couldn't do a thing about it.

Then suddenly there was our mail lady with an armload of Swiss
Colony standing there wondering why this woman who looked like she’d been smacked
by a Mack truck was crying and thanking God for her.

As soon as she understood my situation, she immediately swung into
action, trotting upstairs to collect the gifts and promising to handle
everything. Only a few hours later everything was packed, stamped, and ready to go that very day!

I don’t know if the Post Office gives awards for miracles,
but it’s important to me to tell you what this mail carrier means to us. She’s a shining
example of professionalism that goes above and beyond in any occupation.

Friday, November 22, 2013

But I remember vividly the shock and disbelief. It was my
junior year at Central Michigan University. I was strolling along the corridor of
the student union looking for an empty study alcove when a guy approached me. It
was someone from the popular and overpopulated Play Production class whom I did
not know well. Actually, he was in a social strata well above mine, so I have
yet to know why he singled me out. His
eyes were dazed but intense as he stopped me with a hand to my shoulder. “President
Kennedy has been shot,” he said simply.

I froze, staring at him. It was like the news had dropped
from the ceiling and struck me in the face. We clutched arms for a moment; then
he moved on.

Left standing in the middle of the hall as the students flowed
around me, I watched as the news slowly caught up to them. It wasn't long
before everyone began scattering to the various TV rooms to watch a heavy-eyed
Walter Cronkite explain what little was known at that point.

Of course I've been following all the retrospectives of this
horrific event, but this memory didn't strike me until my step-bro posted his impressions
as a 12-year-old on Facebook. The flurry of comments that followed, each one a
brief memory of where they were when the news hit, brought it full front and center.